Executive Summary

Electrical power is the lifeblood of the data center. A stable source of clean power must be present for any data center to operate. But the very equipment that runs in the data center is often the cause of power quality problems experienced throughout that data center. Fans, power supplies, rectifiers, transformers, pumps, and lighting ballasts can distort the available power waveform. The resulting sags, transients, and harmonics may make the infrastructure unreliable and inefficient.

As a specialist and innovator in the data center power business, Legrand has taken a giant leap forward in the functionality of our power distribution units by integrating new continuous power quality monitoring capabilities. This paper explains why measuring total harmonic distortion (THD) is essential to modern data centers and how having circuit breaker trip forensics available at the rack PDU makes sense to address several data center power pain points